Hard Power and Regional Diplomacy: The Dibb Legacy

Abstract

To a much greater extent than their US counterparts, Commonwealth governments such as Australia's have maintained a sharp demarcation between both government agencies and those officials who manage their policies, and the independent strategic analysts in academia or in think tanks who provide independent assessments of government policy performance. There are examples of members of US foreign policy and strategic studies establishments who have excelled in manoeuvring between Washington's inner sanctums of policy formulation and prestigious independent venues providing policy commentary — Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright and, more recently, Ashton Carter and Jeffrey Bader all come to mind — but few Australian equivalents. In this context, Paul Dibb is the Australian who has most resembled the American model of a policy practitioner. He has been sufficiently nimble and eclectic to bestride both the hard power world of strategic and defence policy analysis and the delicate and often ambiguous world of diplomatic counsel and has engaged in both pursuits with unquestionable excellence. Tracing how Dibb has managed to do this, particularly during the late Cold War years and in the post-Cold War era, is the primary theme of this chapter. The narrative that follows reveals at least two fundamental strands that merit such a discourse. One is his ability GEOGRAPHy, POWER, STRATEGy AND DEFENCE POLICy 184 to apply his unparalleled understanding of how great power dynamics work in the Asia-Pacific region to specific policy tasks and objectives. It has been no coincidence that Dibb has been tapped on the shoulder by successive Australian foreign ministers and corresponding defence officials to communicate his country's thinking about regional defence and security politics to key policymakers throughout Asia over more than three decades. In turn, he has gained a wealth of knowledge about how those regional actors perceive Australia's role as both a key US ally and a sovereign player in the Asia-Pacific and international security arenas. This has reinforced his reputation as one of the world's premier strategic and defence policy experts while providing him with the flexibility to broaden his growing profile as an accomplished diplomatic councillor. Second, he has orchestrated the strengths and weaknesses of bilateral and multilateral security politics in ways that have facilitated regional confidence-building and Australia's role in it.